meet the mindful


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SELF

PARENTING

MEET THE MINDFUL

DADDY

The new book from mindfulness experts Headspace is a manifesto for calm and clarity when having a baby. But when it happened to meditation master Andy Puddicombe, did he walk his talk?

W

Words BRIGID MOSS

e’re sitting in a warehouse-style office in rainy Islington, but Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe is transporting me to sunny LA, describing the moment each morning when he meditates, cross-legged on the floor of his Venice Beach bungalow, his nine-monthold baby Harley wriggling next to him. ‘Lucinda [Mrs Puddicombe] does up to 4am and everything after that is me,’ he says. ‘That early-morning smile is pretty special.’ Welcome to the mindful world of the Puddicombes: ex-Buddhist monk Andy, 42, his exercise-physiologist wife Lucinda, 33, and baby Harley. Puddicombe moved Headspace’s head office to LA four years ago, just before the launch of its meditation app, prompted by the idea of an outdoorsy life, ‘surfing every day before work’. The app has since gone global, with over three million subscribers. I don’t know many dads who volunteer for the smallhours shift every single day. But Puddicombe has form: his early rising is a legacy of his years in a monastery. ‘Maybe it’s just coincidence, but Harley tends to calm down if

we’re doing meditation. When he was little it was great because he used to fit neatly here [on his crossed legs].’ I’m meeting Puddicombe to talk about the third book in the Headspace series, A Mindful Pregnancy, written while Lucinda was pregnant and just after. ‘Some of it was kind of messy, some of it was kind of raw, learning as we went.’ Your first thought may be the same as mine: isn’t it a bit galling for a man to tell us how to be calm when pregnant? Puddicombe has pre-empted this in the first two pages of the book, summed up like so: ‘This book is not about the womb, it is about the mind. It’s about the human condition.’ Puddicombe says pregnancy is the perfect time to start meditating, as after nine months, it will have become a solid habit. ‘What greater gift to give your child than peace of mind – both yours and theirs?’ he says. ‘From the very beginning a baby learns from our own behaviours and from our state of mind, so if we can nurture that, and cultivate a peaceful state, it has to be a good thing.’ But doesn’t this just add meditation – and, even harder, staying calm – to the already long list of things to do while pregnant, including less coffee, zero alcohol…? ‘It’s nice in theory,’ says Red’s currently seven-months-pregnant features director Sarah Tomczak. ‘There’s something in being more kind and nurturing to yourself when you’re pregnant. But even if it’s your first baby, there’s only so much time to prepare. Is it more important to use that doing yoga, for example, or preparing your mind?’ While there’s plenty of evidence that mindfulness works for mental wellbeing, there’s no study to say a calm parent »

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Puddicombe with wife Lucinda and their son Harley LEFT: Lucinda meditated for a more mindful pregnancy will have a calm baby. You can’t deny, though, for most of us, this time comes with a riot of mood changes. ‘The dark side of the mind is with us our entire life,’ says Puddicombe. ‘But there’s an intensity to pregnancy and early parenthood, and if there’s a time when it’s going to reveal itself, it is then, when you’re tired, stressed, when there are so many hormonal changes and no escape.’ Women are relieved, he says, when he tells them it’s normal to have dark thoughts. Puddicombe brings a reassuring clarity to the dark side, whether it’s sadness, depression or anxiety. ‘The thoughts arise, they generate an emotion, the emotion becomes stronger,’ he says. ‘We feed it with more thinking and eventually it becomes a new pattern of thinking.’ What regular meditation can do, he says, is stop it getting to that stage, or take you to a place where you can see the sad or anxious thoughts as thoughts, not as you. One of Puddicombe’s themes is the importance of a support system – partner, mum, friend or sibling.

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‘And if you are bringing a child into the world as a couple, nurturing your relationship is just as important as nurturing the bond with your unborn child.’ So, that whole negotiation of who does the childcare, is there a mindful way to do that? ‘I’m away a lot, so when I’m home I want to be with Lucinda and Harley. Lucinda loves her exercise, so I’ll take Harley so she can go cycling or running.’ Don’t they argue about anything? ‘I’m fortunate, Lucinda isn’t terribly argumentative, by nature,’ says Puddicombe. ‘And I’m not either – but through training.’ But isn’t it annoying for her to be faced with him always calm? ‘Horrible!’ he says, laughing. ‘But there were times I sat and cried with Lucinda, if it was difficult, and there were times where she felt frustrated and we shared that.’ Their nine months does sound idyllic: blue skies, healthy food, spin classes and even meditating as a couple. ‘It sounds a bit LA but given what I do, it’s hardly surprising,’ he says. When he was working away, Lucinda played his Headspace meditations to her stomach. If that takes off, there’s going to be a generation of babies knowing your voice, I say. ‘That’s a cult, right there,’ he jokes. There was a time when the Puddicombes thought they might not have children, after he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. His years of training kicked in. ‘With meditation, such a big part of it is a willingness to rest in uncertainty,’ he says. ‘That’s easier to do in some areas of

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Illustration Tonwen Jones, colagene.com

SELF life than others. This was a big one.’ By fluke, though, they conceived unexpectedly, soon after the end of treatment. To help Puddicombe research the book, Headspace gathered research groups of women. He was amazed to find out how negative some of the women felt about their pregnant or postnatal bodies. ‘I think for Lucinda it was a radical shift,’ he says. ‘Her identity as an athlete was tied up with how she looked.’ Lucinda had one of those enviable super-fit pregnancies, exercising up to the birth, and back in the saddle – literally, on the stationary bicycle in the yard, a cushion strapped to it – just days afterwards. Puddicombe was also shocked how people seemed to relish telling Lucinda their dramatic birth stories. ‘I noticed it changed how she anticipated what was to come.’ So he searched out friends with good births. In the book, he has a mindful way of dealing with unasked-for advice: see they mean well, cherry-pick what’s helpful, let the rest go. He says he didn’t feel any anxiety, until he got in the delivery room. ‘There’s nothing you can do other than trust and be there.’ Despite Lucinda practising mindfulness techniques for pain, towards the end of the 36-hour labour, the obstetrician recommended an epidural. ‘The doctor felt it got to a point where it wasn’t going to benefit her or the baby if she held out any longer. She had the epidural and he arrived not that long afterwards.’ It was, says Puddicombe, ‘a beautiful experience’.

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So, does he still get to go surfing every morning? ‘A lot less. But when I do it now I appreciate it more than ever.’ Grateful for what you have? That must be the mindful key to parenting contentment. e The Headspace Guide To… A Mindful Pregnancy by Andy Puddicombe (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99)

ANDY PUDDICOMBE ’S MAP TO MINDFULNES S (PREGNANC Y OPTIONAL) ● Be in the moment. ‘The answer to a calmer

mind, and therefore more fulfilment in life, is simply spending more time in the here and now.’ ● Get there by meditating. It’s training to stay in the present, to observe your thoughts rather than be overtaken by them. ● You know pregnancy can be emotional, but learn not to go with the ups and downs. ‘Ask yourself if you would say/act in such a way if the baby was not in the womb, but in your arms.’ ● Uncertainty, dissatisfaction, suffering, heartbreak, frustration… these are all ‘part of the human condition. We can find a sense of Learn more about ease and contentment when we embrace mindful pregnancy at the fact suffering is unavoidable’. REDONLINE.CO.UK

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